With Marlowe, Microsoft has created a prototype server that relies on Intel’s Atom chip, most often found today in ultra-portable computing devices like ...

And, thanks to Eric Lai from ComputerWorld I am in one of the articles as well. ;-)

Because they were designed for laptops and netbooks, Atom CPUs can be quickly put into sleep/hibernate states and then quickly woken up, said Dave Ohara, a consultant who runs the Green Data Center blog,unlike desktop and server CPUs.

The next step is a big name Server OEM shipping an Intel Atom server. Here is a scary # for Intel quoted in the NYtimes.

With Marlowe, Microsoft has created a prototype server that relies on Intel’s Atom chip, most often found today in ultra-portable computing devices like netbooks. Such chips consume about one-tenth as much power as a regular Xeon server chip from Intel, and computer boards based on the chip cost about $70 instead of $1,000. The Atom chips, however, can perform only about one-fourth the amount of work in a given period of time as the Xeon chips, said Navendu Jain, a Microsoft researcher, during an interview Tuesday at the company’s headquarters.